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Divorce Recovery Success: And How Your Post Divorce Relationship With Your Ex Can End It

Spoiler alert! If you want to have a healthy relationship with your ex after divorce, let go of your emotional reactions to your ex and replace them with the wisdom of a non-emotional alternative: the bank teller.

I know. It sounds stupid. Here’s why it might be the smart thing to do in your recovery.

What do you want your relationship with your ex to look like after you get divorced?

Are you still in a relationship with your ex?

The marriage is over. The judge has signed the papers. They are no longer legally bound to each other. But are you still emotionally attached to your ex-spouse? If so, he has work to do. Simply put, to thrive in the next chapter of your life, you must dissolve your attachments to your past, especially your ex.

I know. It sounds impossible to dissolve all personal attachments, have no ill will towards your ex, forget about your ex and move on with your life. This is the person with whom you shared some of the most wonderful days of your life, and also the one who caused you some of the most miserable days of your life.

You say, “I can’t just flip a switch and forget him/her and our past. Especially if I have to talk to him/her and see him/her often every time our children visit their other parent?”

What does it mean to “be attached”?

If you want something from your ex or if your ex triggers emotional reactions in you, whether positive or negative, you are still attached to your ex in some way.

Want something from your ex. Wanting something from your ex can include, for example, your ex will: (1) apologize or explain why he wanted out, or (2) want to stay friends with you, or (3) won’t get a new lover so soon, or (4) be jealous of your new boyfriend/girlfriend, or (5) he’s sorry he left you, or (6) he feels bad about how he treated you, etc. These are ways your ex still has a thing you want. By wanting your ex to do something for you, you are still giving them power over you. Therefore, you are still attached to your ex.

Have feelings towards your ex. Whether you obsess over the good memories of your ex or you obsess over the bad memories of your ex, either way you’ve invited your ex into your head and into your life. And therefore you are still attached. If the mention of your ex triggers positive feelings in you or if it triggers negative feelings in you, you are still attached.

If you want to reconcile with your ex or if you want to kill your ex, it makes no difference. If the sight of your ex, or the mention of your ex’s name, or a private thought you may have about your ex evokes strong emotional reactions, good or bad, you are still attached to and in a relationship with your ex that has not ended. still.

So, What is the ideal relationship you should have with your ex?

The goal of a successful post-divorce relationship with an ex is a “friendly detachment” that is devoid of any emotion, positive or negative.

Your ex is past history. Your relationship with your ex ended with the judge’s signature, if not before. It no longer exists unless you cling to it and embellish it in your head.

The ideal relationship with an ex is one in which there is absolutely no emotional reaction attached. Zero. No. You couldn’t care less if your ex is extremely happy, rich, loved and adored or if your ex is extremely unhappy, poor, hated and reviled. Plus, aside from a general sense of “goodwill toward your fellow man,” you couldn’t care less if your ex is alive or dead. either of the two means not a thing for you. Your ex is a perfect stranger with whom you have no demands or expectations. Your ex has become the complete stranger you run into at the mall.

Holding on to the relationship prevents you from investing in new relationships. As long as you have one foot in the past, you cannot take a step into the future.

Therefore, the ideal relationship with your ex is one that is “a great great not a thing.“You should be totally indifferent to your ex and have not investment or emotional reaction, either positive or negative.

Q: So if successful divorce recovery requires me to emotionally detach from my ex, how exactly am I supposed to do that?

HAS: Go cash a check.

Bank tellers as models

A metaphor for a healthy relationship with your ex is the bank teller.

First of all, we never see a bank teller unless we have some specific business to perform, such as cashing a check. Otherwise, the bank teller does not occupy part of our lives.

When we make you need to cash a check, we go to a bank teller and we are friendly and polite. We conduct our business, and when we have finished our business we politely say “good-bye” and leave. At no time do we feel strong positive or strong negative feelings for the narrator. We wish neither good nor bad for the narrator since we are not attached to the person. We do not inquire about his personal life, nor do we criticize them or offer advice on how they could improve his life. We are only there to perform the “business task” of cashing a check. That is, we treat the narrator with “friendly indifference.”

Same thing with your ex. You have no need to see or contact your ex unless there is some specific business to conduct, such as arranging visiting hours or getting together to swap children for visiting parents. And when you do, you treat your ex with the same courtesy and friendly indifference that you gave the bank teller. Nothing more and nothing less.

Just like you did with the cashier, your contact with your ex is friendly without being intimate, courteous without being pompous, nonchalant except to conduct the business at hand. Using the bank teller as a model is a great way to practice your new relationship with your ex, without confusing the old limits of intimacy and friendship with the new severely reduced limit of instrumental task problem solving.

They used to have full access to each other in which very few boundaries prohibited them from discussing any topic or engaging in personal or intimate behavior. You now have extremely limited access with strict limits that prohibit most topics of discussion and personal or intimate behavior. The only exceptions are discussions about your children and their well-being.

If the bank teller is hard to identify with, returning a faulty product to a Best Buy customer service representative has the same nature of “friendly indifference” while conducting well-defined business as the bank teller.

So what is the point?

A successful divorce recovery is complicated. He is especially vulnerable to the way he handles her relationship with her ex. What worked during your marriage won’t work now.

Other than dealing with problems related to your children, you have little reason to make or maintain contact with your ex. So don’t do it unless you absolutely have to.

If you have children with your ex, you will have to have some contact. And when she does, the nature of their post-divorce relationship is very different from the relationship she had while married.

Treating the post-divorce relationship as a continuation of the relationship built over many years of marriage seems normal. It also spells disaster for your recovery. You are no longer lovers and marriage partners. The rules are different and the limits of acceptable behavior are severely limiting.

Therefore, a new relationship, completely devoid of any emotional reaction, will preserve peace and allow you to manage the joint responsibilities you have with your spouse to resolve educational, health and visitation problems with your children. It will also allow you to attend and enjoy school and sports activities, birthdays, vacations, weddings, and other events where your ex will be present.

Your world has changed. Your relationship with your ex has changed. All for the better. Don’t screw it up trying to keep the old relationship with your ex alive. It will backfire and seriously threaten the satisfaction of his new life after the divorce.

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